A 13-year-old Sebring Middle School student was arrested today and charged with two counts of making a written threat to conduct a mass shooting.
The suspect admitted to sending a school shooting threat to two friends (who go to another school) as a joke to scare them. The message included a photo of a gun the student claimed to have downloaded from the internet. The suspect advised they used an app to change their phone number.
The two students who got the threat did not report it. They shared it on social media and it was another student who saw the post and reported it to their parents.
“The student who reported this threat has my thanks,” Sheriff Paul Blackman said. “I hope parents will talk to their children and remind them that the right thing to do when they see something like this is to report it to an adult, not share it on social media.
“We are never going to take things like this as a joke because it is not a joke; it’s a felony. We will arrest anybody who makes a threat, no matter what their motivation.”
